


The Last Good Day

by Secret Staircase (elwing_alcyone)



Category: Zero: Tsukihami no Kamen | Fatal Frame IV: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse
Genre: F/M, Family, Implied/Referenced Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-09 14:16:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3252854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elwing_alcyone/pseuds/Secret%20Staircase
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a way, all three of the Haibaras get their wish.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Last Good Day

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Beyond the Camera's Lens Christmas Exchange.

They walk along the clifftop, the day before You has to leave. Later people will say that was one of the last good summer days, with a freshening breeze from the sea, the gulls and clouds and white waves interrupting the endless blue. The sun is hot, but the day feels wide awake and wild with possibility. Later the only kind of summer will be hazy, drowsy, the sky more yellow than blue, the clouds formless, the heat suffocating, and summer will last from April to October, but now there are still days like this.

Ayako is running in wide circles inland, chasing birds from their ground nests. Her hair is already coming out of the braid Sakuya put it in before they left, but she's laughing, and Sakuya is laughing to see her.

"Do you remember sneaking out of school to do this?" Sakuya says. Her own hair is loose and already blowing in briar-rose tangles around her face. Every so often she tries to sweep it back, and only makes the problem worse. "You got in so much trouble!"

"I got the idea from you," he says. He almost adds, "Remember?" but stops himself, in case she doesn't. It's becoming harder to tell. But she still has good days, too.

"It's a rite of passage." She claws at her mass of hair again, and waves at Ayako, who is standing far ahead on the path, waiting for them to catch up. "Everyone who grows up here has to sneak up to the lighthouse at least once. Father did it too, when he was young. Did he tell you that?"

"I want to go to the top! I want to go all the way to the top and throw dolly down, okayyyy?" Ayako shrieks back to them, holding the doll aloft, and You and Sakuya both laugh this time.

"You never went to the top, did you?" Sakuya says, linking her arm through You's. "You can see the whole archipelago to the south, and on a day like this you can see all the way to the mainland. Last time I was there I tried to play the organ, and my friend Miki wanted me to get exorcised. She's so superstitious. It sounded magnificent, though. If I could go back in time for a little while, I think I'd go back to the days when the Tsukimori maidens would play to the moon."

"Well, if Father gets his way about that – " You begins, but stops at the sound of a scream from up ahead, not excited but shrill and pained. Ayako has disappeared from view.

It's nothing more serious than a sprained ankle when they find her lying in the grass, but there is no question of going any further while Ayako howls and refuses to stand unaided. You carries her piggyback all the way home, and Sakuya keeps saying, "It doesn't matter, Ayako, we'll go back some other time."

But they never will go back, and one day, when the sun is blazing white and September feels like July, You will remember and regret the view he never got to see, and that he never got to see it with Sakuya, and he'll remember that Ayako wanted to go all the way to the top and make her dolly fall, and at the last moment he'll think, "Ayako, you would have loved to see this – "


End file.
